Tech Tips, Comments and Curious Stuff

Command Pattern

2010-02-18T19:34:00Z

One of the most common IT projects that business application developers do is integration between multiple systems. In the CRM world it is not uncommon to see integrations to/from various application and services such as ERP systems, social networks, application providers (e.g. campaign marketing), etc. While there are heavy duty tools for different scenarios (E.g. CRM-GP connector ) as well as whole frameworks for orchestration (e.g. BizTalk ) the pattern that I describe here will allow you to achieve...(read more)

Shame on me

2010-02-12T04:03:00Z

Gosh, I need to make some time to return to my blogging activities. I've been swamped with work finalizing details for some CRM5 features... very cool stuff but very time consuming too. I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel, lets hope is not a train coming my way!! :) Some parner solutions to check out in the meantime: Akvelon's global search for Dynamics CRM: http://www.akvelon.com/CRMGlobalSearch.aspx Resco Mobile CRM Studio http://www.resco.net/enterprise/company/news.aspx?file...(read more)

Size Matters. Mobile User Experience.

2010-01-26T05:22:00Z

Since I’ve been using a touch screen phone I realized something, the user experience in mobile devices is effectively surpassing that of the desktop, but why? Is it because of the multiple inputs/sensors attached to the device (e.g. accelerometer, GPS)? Is it because of the portability of the device (e.g. always available)? Or is it something else, something additional that pushes developers and designers to really do their best and, well, yes, keep things simple! I honestly believe that the limited...(read more)

I love my WiMo phone

2010-01-06T03:30:00Z

I received an HTC imagio as a holiday gift and it is just amazing. Sure, it has room for improvements but so far I'm pretty impresed. Oh and yes I turned off touch flo so I'm running bare wimo 6.5....(read more)

Privacy and Security: An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg

2009-12-05T21:50:00Z

I find very curious and yet logical the path that facebook is following... I still feel bugged about their ACLs: friends, friends of your friends and everyone... the problem is with the middle one, "friends of your friends" what does that really mean and why would someone ever chose to use it? Can I really trust the friends of my friends? and if that is the case then why I don't trust the friends of my friends' friends? See my point? Anyhow, I've been involved with security...(read more)

And I won!!!

2009-12-03T16:38:00Z

Yes!... I was actually the winner of the contest to guess how many CRM Online trials we would get in November. I'm sure someone from our marketing team will publish the actual numbers but I can definitively tell you that we got a terrific response, thank you! As promised, lets talk a bit a bout CRM 5! I was watching the PDC09 videos for XRM to confirm the features that we have already talked about publicly so that I could expand a bit more without disclosing confidential information and unfortunatelly...(read more)

Come on, a bit more trials for CRM Online!

2009-11-25T17:57:00Z

Turns out my high end guess for the number of CRM Online trials in November was not far fetched at all! The launch of CRM Online November update has surpassed the expectations of many and is about to make me the winner of the guessing contest :) All I need is a little bit more push from my fellow followers so go and get a few trials for your customers http://crm.dynamics.com :) Regardless if I win or not I'm super excited to see the response that CRM online has got so far.... fantastic! And yes...(read more)

xRM at the PDC!

2009-11-13T22:08:00Z

Oh yes; next week you will be able to see firsthand some of the coolest enhancements that we’ve done to the xRM platform. Andy, Barry and Nikhil will be presenting 3 sessions at the Professional Developers Conference. All of them highly recommendable: http://microsoftpdc.com/Search?term=Xrm · Developing xRM Solutions Using Windows Azure. Come learn how Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be used to rapidly develop on-premises or services-based "anything" Relationship Management (xRM) applications...(read more)

Keep them coming! more and more CRM Online trials

2009-11-11T20:24:00Z

So far I'm still on the standing list to win the prize for guessing how many new trials of CRM Online we will get from November 1st to November 30. The response has been fantastic but my number is still way north so I need more of you to encourage your customers to get a trial!! To be fair the number that I entered is the fourth largest so I was very optimistic; still I believe we can get there with your help. Trial CRM Online today! no strings attached whatsoever; the app really rocks! http...(read more)

Get a free CRM Online trial in just minutes!

2009-11-05T04:33:00Z

The latest and greatest CRM Online version (internally called R4) was released this week. While this is not a brand new major version there are a ton of enhancements: Enhanced home page (with charts), improved import data tools, getting started sections and a ton of enhancements around performance and reliability of the outlook client. My favorite enhancement is the simplified sign-up process and what we call “instant provisioning”. It literally takes 2 minutes to get you up and running into a fully...(read more)

Improved CRM Outlook client released (aka R4 client)

2009-10-23T22:38:00Z

Today I received the news that our outlook CRM team just released an improved outlook client (that we internally have refered to as R4 client) which works with CRM online and CRM4 on-premise. There are A TON of enhancements and I'm sure that someone from our marketing or outlook team will do a blog post with details soon. The one thing that you should know... you want it, period :) Honestly I've personally been dogfooding it for several months and the improvements are noticeable, really snappy...(read more)

Check out the new look of the CRM dev center!

2009-10-22T00:55:00Z

New look, new content... the CRM dev center rocks! http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/crm/default.aspx Feedback welcome, happy to pass that along to our documentation team :)...(read more)

Zune HD, Quead Core desktop, SSD laptop or LED TV?

2009-10-18T23:15:00Z

I don't usually post personal stuff on this blog but since I'm still not supposed to blog about all the things that I'm working on* I decided to break my own rules he he. For the past month or so I’ve spent countless hours wondering what to purchase from the items mentioned on the title. And yes, they have radically different prices but is not about the amount itself, it’s about discipline to pick the one that is going to give me and my family most satisfaction. By that standard I have...(read more)

CRM 4.0 and Dynamics GP 10 connector

2009-10-05T16:23:00Z

Did you know that the Dynamics CRM-GP 10 connector has already been released and that is Free? Yup... you can find all the information that you need in the GP's team blog here: https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/worldwide/us/productinformation/factsheets/MDCRMGPAdapter I haven't personally dowloaded/tried the connector but I imagine that a ton of partners will be anxious to give it a try....(read more)

Areas that display this entity...

2009-09-09T13:33:00Z

I recently received a question about the "Areas that display this entity" section that appears on the entity editor of CRM 4.0. The question was how to programmatically manipulate that section. You see, that section is directly tied to the Sitemap and not to the entity itself so you don't use the metadata APIs but rather change the sitemap using import/export (this article has more details). Happy coding....(read more)

Long wish lists :)

2009-09-04T17:17:00Z

Today I spent a fair amount of time looking at customer suggestions and I'm super excited that we will be addressing many of them in our next major release :). One thing that I noticed is that sometimes people log a long list of suggestions within a single suggestion entry. While we appreciate all sorts of feedback not login individual suggestions makes it very difficult to track your feedback :( so whenever possible I encourage you to help us by voting/ logging individual suggestions for each...(read more)

Dynamics CRM Certification (Logo)

2009-08-06T14:27:00Z

I recently received a couple of emails asking about CRM certification guidelines for ISV solutions and whether or not some things are allowed. It was very evident that people haven't read the certification guidelines as those clearly had the answer to the questions posed... the puzzle then was why people didn't read the certification guidelines before asking the question? Shortcut? Guileless not clear enough? Guidelines not discoverable enough? Most likely, all of the above but discoverability...(read more)

Some Interesting Facts about Your Suggestions

2009-08-04T19:09:00Z

I just got an Outlook reminder about the fact that I haven’t blogged in a while; Gee... I honestly feel bad about it. When I reflected on the reasons behind my posts scarcity I came to the conclusion that there is very little I can share from all the good stuff that I’m doing or that the CRM team is doing hence my lack of posts. Well, ok, there is also another reason… I’ve been crazy busy getting ready for a visit back to my home country, Mexico J One particular area that I’ve been spending a lot...(read more)

XRM Video

2009-07-15T22:28:00Z

Waaay cool... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yru5CkANOKA...(read more)

IIS URL Rewrite and Application Request Routing

2009-07-15T03:06:00Z

A couple of years ago, back in my home country, one of the main projects that I worked on (as a programmer btw) was a “reverse proxy” that we called “redirector”. Fundamentally it was an ISAPI filter for IIS 5/6 that reverse proxied internal HTTP sites and did some basic load balancing across web servers (the code was mostly built by others before my time). The end result was that users requested http://server1/jsp/page.jsp (server1 was an IIS front end) but the page was actually processed on http...(read more)

CRM Mobile Express (for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0) Released

2009-07-10T16:02:00Z

Indeed, this baby is now officially released. http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2009/07/09/product-release-mobile-express-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-4-0.aspx And how much extra you will have to pay for it? Nothing! Nada! Nichts! Zéro! Because it is free for CRM 4.0 customers; well anyone can download it but it will probably be of no use if you don’t have CRM in the first place right? J I remember back when the feature team in charge of Mobile Express started adapting it for CRM 4.0 one of their goals...(read more)

Cool Web Sites

2009-07-07T21:25:00Z

I always like to keep up to date and observe “trends” that emerge in the webosphere. Yesterday I spent some time looking for “cool” websites (I was mostly looking for new UI paradigms/controls). It was so funny to find a 2005 Time magazine list of the coolest web sites back then…some of them look so 90s now. Anyhow I found a couple of sites that besides looking great they accomplish their task pretty well instead of just being eye candy; check them out. http://demos.telerik.com/silverlight/salesdashboard...(read more)

Improved Suggestions Program

2009-06-30T16:48:00Z

You gave us feedback and we listened J . A few months back we rolled out a “suggestions” program to provide a tool for customers to give suggestions for the product. We’ve received a lot of fantastic suggestions and all of them are being looked at by the product team. I’ve personally looked and responded to hundreds of suggestions and trust me, many of them will make it in the next major release of CRM. While customers in general appreciated the fact that we provided an “official” forum for them...(read more)

And the XRM train starts rolling...

2009-06-12T17:50:00Z

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=3053 This year is going to be a fun one :)...(read more)

Bing, Natal, Windows 7, Wave, CRM5….fiuff!

2009-06-04T01:01:00Z

I must confess I feel a bit overwhelmed with the sea of information of upcoming products and technologies (not only from Microsoft). Good thing I’ve had a bit of time to catch up a bit with the never ending stream of goodies that the IT industry produces J Bing it! Lots and lots of conversations both internally with Microsoft colleagues and externally with friends; my verdict? Bing is definitively a step in the right direction; instead of trying to tackle google head to head with yet another plain...(read more)